The nonprofit EMS Council of New Jersey (EMSCNJ) and the New York Jets are teaming up to raise money for the EMSCNJ’s 9/11 memorial, which will feature a piece of steel beam from the World Trade Center.
A portion of the ticket sales for the Dec. 3 home game against the Kansas City Chiefs will help the EMSCNJ raise money for the monument – the only one in the USA dedicated exclusively to all the emergency medical services personnel who responded that day.
EMS responders and dignitaries from throughout New Jersey broke ground on Sept. 10 for the monument, which will sit next to Keansburg’s existing 9/11 memorial on Beachway Avenue. The 5-foot-long, 338-pound portion of rusty, twisted steel measures 34 inches wide and 29 inches high. It will be mounted on a massive rock that washed up in Keansburg after Superstorm Sandy and be displayed between replicas of the Twin Towers. Its placement will be in direct line to where the towers stood across the Raritan Bay.
The 88-year-old nonprofit New Jersey State First Aid Council, doing business as the EMSCNJ, represents 20,000 EMS volunteers affiliated with nearly 300 EMS agencies throughout the state. It was among 1,132 organizations to be awarded an artifact from the Twin Towers rubble. Since taking possession of the steel beam in 2011 from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, EMSCNJ officials have been searching for an appropriate site for a memorial to honor the dozens of EMS responders who died Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the countless New Jersey EMS volunteers and responders from several states who pitched in to help that day and for weeks afterward.
Dedication of the finished memorial is planned for September 2018.